Laraine was the winner of the signed copy of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley. We’re discussing the book this month over at the Virtual Book Club, and Alan will join us—or, me, for a discussion towards the end of the month. In the meantime, here in the UK I…
Read MoreOxford is my second home. I’m not much of one for cities, and there’s no doubt that’s what Oxford is, but especially now the authorities have banned private motor traffic in the town center, it feels more like a really crowded village than a large manufacturing city. So Thursday was an Oxford day, with a…
Read MoreThere are reasons why England is green. Most of them fell upon our heads yesterday. But we were lucky enough that on the longest walk, it waited until we were back in the car before the sky opened. Yesterday was a day for ancient history. First to the Cotswold weaving museum, with its displays of…
Read MoreIn the seventeenth century, the Plunger family built their manor house down near the Lieux River on the edge of Gloucestershire. It was a lovely spot, meadows going gently down to the reeds on this most English of streams, on the outskirts of the hamlet of Nether Bollocks. And the Plungers were happy, for three…
Read MoreSunday was a Roman day. We drove down the Fosse Way to the ruins of the Romano-British villa at Chedworth, where the villa built by a wealthy Brit fond of the Roman life-style built a home for himself 8 miles from the big Roman city of Corinium (now Cirencester.) As it was a typical English…
Read MoreBoth of the recent Russell books I’ve worked on, The Language of Bees and The Green Man (which final name is still to be decided…), look at the roots of what we now know as Britain. Thomas Brothers particularly is fascinated by the Norse and Roman roots of British society, and significant place names touch…
Read MoreHalf of us arrived Thursday just after noon, bleary eyed but glad to be back in England. Cars hired, we wheeled onto the motorway (M25 then M40, for those keeping count) and flirted with Oxford by following that city’s ring road for eighty degrees or so before shooting off for the West. I own a…
Read MoreThe Virtual Book Club, which I started in early 2007, has now worked its way through all the books in the LRK canon and a number of related novels and non-fiction works. So in September, we begin anew, only with a difference: We’ll do the occasional month of “The Writer as Reader” where I choose…
Read MoreThe Green Man–rewrite finished, although never to my complete satisfaction–has zipped its electronic way across the country and landed in my editor’s computer. 427 pages, some of which are not at all bad. Look for it, and its author, in your local bookshop in June 2010. Not under that name: I hope to have its…
Read MoreThis part of writing, the rewrite, is why I’m glad I don’t have to produce two or three books a year. And it’s why I’m glad (well, almost glad) that I’m not a writer who locks herself into an outline. Because what I’m doing now is listening to the story. The first draft gives me…
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